I’m starting to get suspicious regarding whether SARS is actually that widespread. Given that the actual disease bears (superficial?) similarities to diseases already occurring in the population–e.g., the common cold–do you think that maybe we’ll look back in a year and characterize the “crisis” as an exercise in mass hysteria?
We don’t know all there is to know about SARS. That doesn’t mean it’s imaginary. It means we need to do more research.
But I’ll bet the farm that this is a real thing, and the more I read about it, the more worried I get. The death rate keeps increasing (WAY above the normal death rates from the flu, btw), and it looks like it’s extremely hardy in the environment and can live on surfaces for hours or days. That makes it a really tough thing to contain.
If this turns into a worldwide pandemic, hundreds of millions could die. And unlike flu and cold viruses which mutate into more benign forms, it looks like the SARS virus is pretty stable. So that’s a big danger as well.
I think all the worry over SARS is perfectly justified.
Over 600 people died from a mutant strain of the common cold in one month. I think the reaction qualifies as being quite non-hysterical.
in New York, five Chinese American artists were going to teach sixth graders about chinese dance and caligraphy (as they have been doing for two years) and were told the workshop was cancelled because of parents’ fears of SARS. None of the Artists have been out of the country for two years. it was cancelled entirely because of mass hystaria in the media. I have several asian friends throughout the country and they are reporting incidents of harrassment about SARS just because of their race. So something bad is happening. i emialed the director of the program that the artists were part of to find out if it was true, and this is the response i got:
This goes to show the public can certainly overreact and is hardly a new phenomenon. You saw similar issues with AIDS when it was a new thing to the public. Given time and lots of education you no longer see such overreactions to AIDS (or at least not nearly as much as you did in the 80’s and early 90’s).
That however does not mean SARS is not a legitimate health crisis that shouldn’t be worried about. It just means that some people are stupid and react inappropriately.
but it does argue towards mass hysteria, which is the question pondered in the OP.
Fair enough but I see mass hysteria two ways (although probably wrongly so). There is what the public does about a given crisis and what the government/federal agencies do about it. Often the public view can drive the political response.
I do not think the WHO/CDC/similar organizations are overreacting. I do not think the media is overreacting either. By their nature they are given SARS a lot of play but have otherwise seemingly been ok in their reporting.
After that it is up to the people and some are clearly overreacting. Me…SARS hasn’t changed my lifestyle one bit except to maybe pay slightly more attention to flu symptoms should I develop them.
There is certainly mass hysteria, the question is whether it is justified? both CDC and WHO have excellent websites free of all the hysteria flowing around, and you might want to check that. Also, I personally think the US is just entering it’s hysteria curve. Hong Kong and Singapore had mass hysteria at the end of March, Beijing has it now, and I would bet that Taipei is seeing it as well.
Just off the top of my head: SARS didn’t kill 600 in month month, but more like 6 months. So far, it has been mapped genomically as a corona virus and there is no evidence that it mutates easily. Hong Kong traffic fatalities runs at about 20 per month, and SARS is now much higher.
Now I am not a doctor nor do I play one of TV, but it seems that SARS is and is not highly contagious. It is in hospitals, among health workers and close family. However, given the way in general that Chinese spit in public, eat using chopsticks off of common plates (family style), and live in cramped housing, that suggests it isn’t real contageous by casual contact. In addition, WHO says there are less than 5 confirmed cases of transmission between people on the same plane. If it was really contageous on subways, then HK and Singapore should be much more affected.
You certainly don’t want SARS ripping through a hospital in a town near you. Especially since the US doesn’t have the same kind of draconian quarantine laws as seen in Singapore, China, HK.
Stuff like UC Berkeley not allowing students from Asia to attend summer school is a crock. On that list includes Singapore, which is no longer on the WHO travel advisory. If one is asymptomatic and watch your temperature daily, the chance of infection is real low.
I was treated to a whole host of non-handshakes at a big conference at the beginning of April after having come from Shanghai. Let’s see, a city of around 15 million with two confirmed cases at the time. Yep, I’m a real high risk.
the links:
This is most assuredly not a case of mass hysteria in the sense that the danger is real, if perhaps exaggerated. I’d like to know on what basis anyone is casting doubt on the reality of SARS and its validity as a serious global concern. SARS is an infectious viral disease that does not respond well to any known treatment or drug, and has a fatality rate (thus far) between 5-20 percent (depending on the patient’s age and health). That’s significant. The average flu certainly doesn’t kill 5-20 percent of those it infects.
You can see a table of cumulative worldwide number of cases up to May 10 with breakdown by country at this link:
http://www.who.int/csr/sarscountry/2003_05_10/en/
In a few months the disease reached over 30 countries. A long incubation period makes it hard to control the spread of this strain of coronavirus. Of course there is a strong element of paranoia and hysteria in the popular reaction to the virus, particularly in nations that have not experienced significant infection and are irrationally worried of SARS, giving places of infection the lepers’ treatment. Outcast unclean! Business has been decimated because of such irrational fears.
Examples of silliness have already been mentioned, and fear always sets in deeper and earlier than common sense. And let’s not forget the power of human stupidity and ignorance, always the supreme forces on this planet. Consider, for example, the talismanic reliance on surgical masks to protect from the virus: even though masks ought to be changed regularly several times a day to prevent harmful build-up, I’ve not seen anyone change their mask more frequently than once daily. Or consider the fellow I saw a few weeks ago, strolling through the streets at the height of the epidemic in Hong Kong, sporting a mask with a hole cut into it for his cigarette (others with the similar bright idea have also been spotted).
Here in Hong Kong the alarm is subsiding, in my estimate, although it may flare up again once the damage to the already creaking Hong Kong economy is assessed properly. I would have to say though that there wasn’t really hysteria as such, beyond some ultra-crowded supermarkets for a period of a couple weeks (no hysteria by Hong Kong standards, anyway). There was alarm and concern aplenty, but it probably helped Hong Kong to “turn the corner” on this epidemic, as the city got over the peak infection rates rather quickly.
In an area with the kind of population density Hong Kong has, I think the city did remarkably well. Infection rates could have been far, far worse, in my opinion.
I think the real question now is can China, birthplace of SARS, contain the disease? It risks spreading in the medically backward rural areas, and there are doubts that some of the infection data provided by China are all accurate, suggesting things may be worse than they seem.
I think it has to be kept in mind that the fact that the consequences are not worse now is to no small degree DUE to the decisive measures being taken. The number of deaths now is the one we have achieved WITH measures being taken. People who consider this as mass hysteria need to think a bit on what the situation might look like if no action were taken. Given that little is know about ways of infection, isolating known and carriers and suspected carriers until their status is resolved is a very sensible thing to do to prevent further spreading, and there is no way to guess how many more people might have been infected, had such measures not been taken.
I am suspicious of the hysteria.
“Death rate of 5% to 20%?” I’ve only seen a 4-6% death rate shown anywhere. And in the US (correct me if I’m wrong) the death rate has been zero, in something like 60 reported cases of the disease (admittedly not a large sample). The disease (as manifested in the US) has even been jokingly referred to as “mild acute respiratory syndrome.” (Who is experiencing a 20% death rate?)
Also bear in mind that the “death rate” is for known cases. There may be many, many more milder cases which have resolved themselves without medical treatment even being sought. The low US death rate might support this notion – even the mild cases are getting diagnosed here.
Furthermore, the death rate (even if it were known with complete accuracy) is not the full measure of risk. What is the infection rate? A 4-6% death rate isn’t so very scary if very few people are getting infected. West Nile virus has a higher death rate from infection, no?
I think the alarm is caused by two factors: One, the disease is potentially capable of spreading quickly. (Though that hasn’t happened to the degree it might’ve. Hats off to health authorities.)
The other factor is that the disease has struck health care workers hard (in Asia at least), and that (I think) has sent shivers of fear through the health care industry.
Toronto seems to be in the process of beating it; it was essentially restricted to some hospitals and has been kept there. New trasmissions are dying out.
This is a null factor, as this is true of all diseases. Even the extreme mortality rates for Ebola necessarily only count those who were actually diagnosed with Ebola.
So no, the SARS death rate is not an absolute statistic. It is, however, a very useful comparative statistic.
Sua
Not the same. Far fewer cases of ebola would go undiagnosed. (Hard to miss those ebola symptoms.) On the other hand, a mild case of SARS (how’s that for an oxymoron?) might easily be mistaken for a flu or a severe cold. Therefore, SARS is much more likely to go undiagnosed. There could have been (and could still be) thousands upon thousands of undiagnosed cases and we’d never know it.
40,000 people die in America every year because of the flu, 0ver 200 die in accidents directly related to their freaking TVs - zero have died from SARS. SARS has shown no more hardiness than any other coronavirus.
Most of the deaths are coming in China and Southeast Asia, Eastern medecine is very, very good at somethings - but treating respiratory illness is certainly not one of them. Their health care is way behind in that department, and very few people have access to what health care there is, hence the high death rates.
Of course there’s some hysteria, it’s a mysterious illness that sells papers, the media’s going to milk this for all it’s worth. If SARS was killing young people with access to modern healthcare, there’d be reason to flip out, as is it’s killing old people who don’t - which is the same thing the flu does.
that’s a misconception. there is no known direct cure for SARS yet, and most of the people affected appears to be healthcare workers…
Graduating with me next week is an international student from China. I’ll call her Li Fei. Her mother, Mrs. Li, just recently managed to obtain a visa to visit the US for Fei’s graduation. Fei was recently informed by the Dean of Students that her mother will not be welcome at the commencement ceremony, nor will she be allowed to visit campus. There have been no reported cases of SARS in the Lis’ hometown, Mrs. Li has already been examined by a doctor, and she (like all other people visiting from China) will be checked over upon arrival in the US and placed in quarantine if she shows any signs of SARS infection. This apparently is not good enough for my school, though. Makes me glad I haven’t already promised to donate money after I graduate, because they’re going to have to do some pretty fancy talking if they ever want to see a dime from me after this.
Here’s a link to the latest body count: http://www.who.int/csr/sarscountry/2003_05_12/en/
Canada 143 cummulative cases and 22 deaths, HK 1,683 and 218 deaths, Singapore 205 and 28. I don’t have time to find a link but the death rate has been upped quite significantly, especially in the elderly. Part of that has to do with definitions of suspected, probable and confirmed SARS.
Since I spend at least an hour a day reading up on the latest SARS, there is a huge amount of BS floating around. Any doctor with a theory gets presented as more or less fact. SARS can easily mutate is one that’s going around, while according to WHO thus far there have been no identified mutations. But the very next day another quack gets reported as saying it’s still possible. I try to limit my info to WHO and CDC otherwise there is just too much opinion going around, and I do actually have a vested interest in this.
Lamia, maybe Mrs. Li can come in to the US10 days early? Ya, that sucks and is irrational.
See if she can get her to come anyway, with a media crew. I’m sure your school would love the negative publicity of turning away an old woman because of her race!
Those percentages are new to me (but still not in the 20% range).
Also, the number of cases reported strikes me as vanishingly small, given the size of human populations in the affected areas. Why have there not been huge waves of SARS victims? Is it that the response has been effective? Or is it simply that the disease is not as virulent as feared?